Gun Control and Regulations

For me a good restraining order for guns boils down to: if you abuse your partner, kids, or animals, you should be barred from owning a gun.

Well, possessing a gun. If they stay out of trouble for long enough, and comply with all other court imposed requirements, they can get them back.

Problem being that in many cases domestic abusers get off without any consequences or very little. So if it were to take that position I would advocate for much longer restrictions than any current ones.

In most states, confiscation can last up to one year.

I’d generally just say there should be increased protection for the accused. I’m opposed to the idea of an ex parte hearing leading to a no knock police raid, whether it be for guns or anything else.

Given that ex parte hearings form the majority of GVROs issued, and that most states with red flag laws are trying to expand the number of people who can petition for one, I see that as a potential issue.

Edited by archonspeaks on Aug 6th 2019 at 2:02:41 AM

I can see that it's an issue, but ex parte no knock raids are necessary in certain cases—esp if there is some reason to believe that someone is inside and about to get hurt.

Rather than preventing them, I would be comfortable with negative consequences if they are misused. It's already a crime to misreport to the police with the intention of getting someone raided.

Then the standards for such a raid should be higher. As it is now, these situations are extremely common and form the majority of GVROs. Given the percentage of people found innocent when they’re actually able to appear in court, it seems highly unlikely such an extreme risk scenario is presented in the number of instances extreme risk precautions are used.

Edited by archonspeaks on Aug 6th 2019 at 3:17:48 AM

Well, what you are suggesting is a general reform of restraining orders in general, not just the red flag versions. Maybe not a bad idea.

Again, the critical difference between a regular restraining order and a GVRO is that regular restraining orders rarely result in police executing a no-knock warrant on the accused’s house. The stakes are much higher there, so the standards and protections should be greater.

I dont disagree, necessarily, but I will stand by my response to Soban's list.

I’m not sure any of those points are necessarily exclusive with the idea of greater protections for the accused.

Though, I can’t completely agree with 1 and 2. Obviously some people count more than others for these types of decisions, a spouse or parent is going to be able to articulate the issue much better than someone who only knew the accused briefly, or knew them six months ago. For 2, again, given the stakes here the standard of evidence required should be higher than a preponderance. That’s the civil court standard, there’s much higher stakes here.

Edited by archonspeaks on Aug 6th 2019 at 6:34:18 AM

Soban didnt make it sound like greater weight was being given to people who are in a position to know more, it sounded like no one is allowed to approach the police about this sort of thing unless they're a family member. That's way too restrictive.

We've been debating 2 this whole time. I have no objections to using caution when conducting no knock searches or confiscating property—although I suspect most jurisdictions already have those in place.

What restriction on reporting would you recommend, then? Obviously it should be restricted to people who are close to the suspect, as it is now the requirements in some states are pretty loose.

And given that there have been multiple incidents where police shot and killed individuals during the execution of a GVRO I’m thinking the precautions aren’t tight enough. I’m also going to mention, again, that the majority of these orders are decided ex parte but when the accused shows up they’re thrown out at a significantly higher rate, which means there’s a large portion of innocent people who have surprise police raids executed on them.

Here’s where every 2020 candidate stands on guns

Edited by Soban on Aug 7th 2019 at 10:25:01 AM

I really think it’s time for us to move past “assault weapons” as a legal term of art.

For reference, Australia uses these categories.

It's not.

The term 'assault weapon' is the predecessor of 'tactical', in that it comes from the gun manufacturers themselves and it was used as a marketing term for guns not marketed to serious sport shooters or hunters, but to people who wanted a tacticool gun.

Uhh...okay?

How does its origin as a marketing term automatically qualify it as a useful legal term?

I suppose it’s useful in the sense that it conjures up images of weapons meant to assault people, which is helpful for gun control advocates, but for actually legally classifying weapons sorting by the type of action and such seems to be more effective.

The technically correct terminology is "self-loading magazine-fed shoulder-fired weapon" if that is what is meant... "Semi-auto rifle" for short.

Edited by DeMarquis on Aug 7th 2019 at 6:42:20 AM

So "nearly every single rifle that is made" is the more accurate term. gee I wonder why people who like guns would be bothered by that./s

In other news, I'm starting to hear some pushback against GVR Os and I honestly can't see why. It seems mostly to revolve around it becoming a defacto ban. In essence, they like the idea, but they don't trust people who are pro gun control not to take it to far. Whereas I feel a well written law would prevent that.

I believe Robrecht was saying "it's not [a legal term of art]", rather than "it's not [time to move past the term]".

But yes, the term assault weapon is one of the biggest hangups I have about gun control plans. It's a meaningless term, and anyone trying to use it in a serious policy proposal is doing themselves a disservice. We need gun control, but we need it to be well-written and effective legislation. The last major federal gun control law was the Assault Weapons Ban, which accomplished little or nothing depending on which studies you look at.

By all means, identify specific kinds of weapons and other hardware (bump stocks and similar devices, high-capacity magazines, etc) that represent an unreasonable level of danger to public safety and ban them, but "assault weapon" isn't that because "assault weapon" isn't anything. It has no widely agreed on definition. Ditto similar terms like "military style" rifles of "weapons of war". (The standard infantry weapon used around the world is an assault rifle, which does have a consistent definition — one that is already covered by existing laws regulating automatic weapons.)

Doing gun control badly is almost worse than not doing it at all, because you can spend a lot of political capital and accomplish little besides giving anti-gun control types more arguments in support of the idea that gun control is unnecessary because it doesn't actually help stop gun crime.

https://kotaku.com/we-do-not-need-to-defend-video-games-from-politicians-1836980493

Kotaku has an editorial made regarding the blame on games for mass shootings.

Given that basically every 2020 Democratic candidate supports a renewed assault weapons ban, I think it’s fair to say it’s still a legal term of art. Of course, they all define assault weapon a little differently, and all their definitions run into the same “well if it has a pistol grip it can’t have a flash hider” type rivet counting that’s allowed the gun industry to so successfully bypass these bans in jurisdictions where they’re on the books.

Actually, I believe most rifles are bolt action. But, yes, thats every AR-15 out there.

As of a few years ago semi-autos are the most common type of rifle, thanks to the AR-15. It’s the single most popular type of rifle in the US, with 15 million total in circulation.